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Following Moshe Safdie’s selection to be the next AIA Gold Medalist, the American Institute of Architects’ (AIA) and Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) has announced Peter Eisenman, FAIA, as winner of the 2015 Topaz Medallion. Eisenman, known for a lifetime of scholarly work and his long associations with Princeton, Harvard, Cooper Union and Yale, will be honored for his global impact on architectural education after more than 60 years of teaching.

“There are probably very few schools of architecture where Peter is yet to have lectured,” wrote Marlon Blackwell, FAIA, in a recommendation letter. 

Before it was even completed, New York Times critic Paul Goldberger dubbed the Wexner Center for the Arts “The Museum That Theory Built.” [1] Given its architect, this epithet came as no surprise; Peter Eisenman, the museum’s designer, had spent the better part of his career distilling architectural form down to a theoretical science. It was with tremendous anticipation that this building, the first major public work of Eisenman’s career, opened in 1989. For some, it heralded a validation of deconstructivism and theory, while its problems provided ammunition for others who saw theory and practice as complimentary but ultimately divergent pursuits. The building’s popular reception has been equally mixed, but its influence and intrigue in the academic community is as pronounced and unmistakeable as the design itself.

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The Crystal Cathedral was designed as a religious theater of sorts, acting as both television studio and stage to a congregation of 3,000. It was commissioned by renowned televangelist Robert Schuller and completed in 1980 near Los Angeles, California. Philip Johnson and John Burgee devised the glass enclosure in response to Schuller’s request that the church be open to the "sky and the surrounding world."

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